Ph.D. student Rohit Bhusal and School of Computing Assistant Professor Hongzhi Guo received the Best Paper Runner-Up Award at the 22nd IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-Hoc and Smart Systems (IEEE MASS), held in Chicago, October 6–8, 2025.
Bhusal received a student travel grant supported by the National Science Foundation to attend MASS 2025 in person and present the paper, “Edge-Assisted Generative AI-Driven Video Communication using Topological Data Analysis.” The paper was also co-authored by Ian F. Akyildiz, editor in chief of ITU Journal on Future and Evolving and President and CTO of Truva Inc.
“I’m honored that our research was recognized with the Best Paper Runner-Up Award at IEEE MASS 2025 and grateful to receive the NSF-supported student travel grant,” Bhusal said. “This achievement would not have been possible without the invaluable guidance of my advisor, Dr. Hongzhi Guo, or the opportunity to represent the University of Nebraska–Lincoln among leading scholars in the field.”
IEEE MASS is a premier annual forum for sharing original, novel ideas in mobile ad-hoc networks and smart systems, defined broadly. As wireless ad-hoc networks continue to evolve and specialize into a number of application scenarios and environments, and sensor-based systems and technologies increasingly permeate our everyday life and become the inner fabric of the Internet of Things and cyber-physical systems, the unfolding of smart environments such as smart cities, smart farming, smart healthcare, and smart manufacturing, to name a few, demand integrated solutions that can make intelligent use of both cloud and edge systems, while applying machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to handle their growing complexity and to leverage the vast amount of available data created.